The Saudis AMA with X2Y2
Primer: The Saudis had another AMA, this time with X2Y2 - the NFT marketplace on Ethereum. WackyChainer of X2Y2 interviewed Prince Sonnie from The Saudis NFT as they talked a little more in-depth about the various decisions made by the team so far, including their innovative use case of soulbound tokens. What are the team doing next and what more is there to come? Find out this and more in the podcast summary below.
The journey so far
The Saudis went live on July 9th 2022
Achieved something no other project has achieved in such a short span of time - 8.2k ETH total volume traded so far
Managed to gather BTC maxis, DeFi and NFT enthusiasts into a #MAXBIDDING movement
NFTs are directly on-chain and will live on the ETH chain forever
Introduced soulbound token with the release of Act 1 to tie in with the lore
Act 2 is coming on July 22nd
Background of Prince Sonnie
Collab manager of The Saudis
Started crypto back in 2015/2016 around the ICO period
Got rekted throughout the journey
Met a lot of people in Web3, and talked to many amazing people on Discord
Interesting that a lot of Web2 people think that talking to strangers on Discord is weird
“Covid, to a certain extent, has helped connect more people than before in a very weird way.”
- WackyChainer
But you still connect to people and build connections the same way
It’s still a working environment but it doesn't feel like work because it is so much fun
Mr.1400 is a perfect example of that, where he came in as an ordinary community member and wanted to step up as a community mod. He just grinds and puts in the work, and became part of the team
“The people that will always contribute the most are the ones that are involved on a daily basis rather than the ones that are actually looking for a job.”
- WackyChainer
Not an artist or a developer, but he is good at connecting with people and you learn to build up your skills this way
Background is in the medical industry and he felt that it wasn’t for him
No longer in Web2 and is fully Web3 full time
CryptoHasbulla has only good words to say about Prince Sonnie, saying that he is a phenomenal human being
The team behind The Saudis
Devs are very competent with the diamond contract
A community member who had 25 years of experience in programming had a look at The Saudis solidity project and commented that it was top tier
The Saudis started as a meme for good vibes and acting as a distraction for the bear market
“I really believe, you know, as long as the support goes both ways and I think the team has been doing tremendously in terms of community representation and getting everybody hyped.”
- Prince Sonnie
The narrative isn’t about trading a bunch of CryptoPunks derivative attached to some culture but max bidding Ethereum and Bitcoin all the way up
Founders are from Saudi Arabia but people don’t believe it
Some of the team members are OGs in the crypto and had been around since 2013 and have worked on Y Combinator
Had team meetings almost every day and it had always been highly productive with a lot of things done
What are The Saudis?
It’s a movement about Max Bidding
Prince Sonnie started joining the Discord and later became the advisor
But he started grinding for a whitelist along with all the rest, shouting Max Bidding on the main chat all the time
Acts as a distraction for the bear market
Woken up some legends on DeFi, BTC maxis to mint their first NFT to join the action and they are asking how to download MetaMask and how to buy ETH and so on
The foundation is that the community is having fun in this bear market, along with the many partnerships that are coming in the near future
Soulbound token SBT
It’s a very new concept that Vitalik had come up with, and it’s the first time an NFT project had integrated it
On 14th Jul an SBT is airdropped to all holders of the NFT
The SBT is bounded to the NFT and you can’t decouple it to trade it
Reason for having SBT
It is hard to retain the community after a free mint and people just dump it
If there is an airdrop for holders, they will sell the airdrop
If there is no airdrop in the near future, people will just dump the NFT
The team thought of a way to give an airdrop and mix it with a story, and people can’t sell it - that is the soulbound token route
They had thought about staking the NFTs but decided against it because they want the simplicity of people just caring about which Saudis they like and identify with, and just buy it
No need to worry about all the DeFi stuff like claiming, staking
The Dune SBT
Saudi’s SBT is a picture of a dune that has the following changes
Day and night cycles for the dune
Sun and moon will move across depending on timezone
Lore is introduced in different acts and chapters
Music is added to the NFT
At the end of the entire journey, there will be a reward waiting for those who stayed on
The SBT may have different rarities and these decisions have to be made together with the community
Marketing
Sold out during a bear market despite not spending any marketing budget on it
Things are just very organic and it’s a project that people want to see happen
“I was imagining myself in the desert and I was walking, then I noticed the dunes which are like fingerprints. The dunes have the same sand but it’s different….it’s always changing…the team has managed to capture the essence of the desert and the essence of the Saudi connection and that is amazing to me.”
- Barefoot
Goblintown came out in the midst of a bear market and no one knew what it was but it had a great impact
Nobody cared about the utility but just found the artwork cool and the community is fun to be in
The Saudis are the same
Good timing counts too because the price of BTC and ETH are going through a local minimum
The meme is just right that the Saudis are max bidding
Price action just adds fuel to the meme
Releasing during a bear market could be a good thing because there are fewer projects so any new launches will stand out and attract more attention
People who remained in the space are also focusing on it
To stand out, one can look at the contracts
A lot of the free mints are just using the same contract and looking the same
Goblintown is different and people are saying The Saudis are the same too with their innovation SBT
The attack on the mint day
Attacked on mint day and attacker ended up losing 12k
Rightblock was the one who did this and he is quite notorious for doing this to other projects
He will spam mints and own a big part of the supply, after which he’ll dump it and hurt the project and community
Once the team realised this, they acted swiftly and quickly recovered 217 of the NFTs before the attacker managed to sell it all out
It costs gas to mint and he lost about 10.37ETH (about 15k USD now)
The 217 NFTs are given back to the community through a raffle
What’s more to come?
The next big thing will be on July 22nd, this coming Friday
The team are meeting with partners who wanted to grow together with The Saudis
Talking to a record label as a team
Talking to some titans in crypto and NFTs and looking to become long-term growth partners with them
Influencers are also coming in
Cryptomessiah also bought in one rare one for 4.88ETH - genuinely liked it and is shilling The Saudis not because it’s a paid promotion
OpenSea verification
They are still working on the OpenSea verification and tick mark
It’s not a very transparent process - some projects can get it yet others can’t
Prince Sonnie is in the OpenSea discord and he is constantly pushing them to work on it
The Saudis in the last 30 days are ranked #8 in total volume and they are the only unverified Ethereum mainnet project
Due to the SBT attachment to the NFT, the team had to push NFTNerds to update on their end because the sales are not showing up
Believes that once all these small stuff are fixed and the data shows up, a lot more eyes will be on it
Derivative of The Saudis
The Saudis are derivatives of CryptoPunks and now Saudis are also used as derivatives in other collections
Crypto-wise, this derivative thing is net positive
There are some unwarranted aspects like the derivative of The Saudis
These derivatives are just tagging The Saudis and photoshopping images saying that the team blocked them and sabotaged them
But the team has no connections with any other derivatives
A lot of these derivatives are just trying to follow a CryptoPunk narrative and make a collection of a race or a culture but that’s not what The Saudis are founded on
These tend not to do so well, so eyes still come back to The Saudis
Dealing with FUD
It’s a lot easier to FUD a project than to come out and support it - usually gets more engagements because people love the drama
“The more FUD, the more the project is talked about. So in a weird way, the more the word spreads about a given project, it means it actually reaches more ears than it would if there wasn't such a backlash.”
- WackyChainer
They are dealing with the FUD by not paying attention to it
They know that a project that lied to its community cannot do well
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